


A Chance of Hope

by Oh_Toasty



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Marital Troubles, Misunderstandings, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 02:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10675674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oh_Toasty/pseuds/Oh_Toasty
Summary: Tony and T'challa fight and before they can work it out, Tony has to go present the Jericho.





	A Chance of Hope

“I never would have married you if I had known things would be like this!” Tony shouts as he works his ring off his finger and throws it. 

T’challa catches it easily, his face as set as stone, “You knew exactly what you were getting into when you agreed to marry me Anthony.”

“That was before things changed,” Tony replies, but he's quiet now, not calm but empty. “Before you decided to actually train the Dora Milaje as wives, to throw it in my face that I'm not good enough.”

T’challa starts “Anthony, I did not-”

“It doesn't matter,” Tony sighs running a hand through his hair. “I need to go back to the states to accept an award, then I have the Jericho demonstration. We can cool off while I'm gone and discuss this later.”

Then Tony walks off leaving his husband holding both their rings. 

When he arrives back in the United States, Tony gets so drunk that he's late for his own plane leaving for Afghanistan. Rhodey comes to get him, supporting him as he stumbles around. 

“What happened,” Rhodey asks when they're seated on the plane. 

“Fought with T’challa,” Tony slurs burrowing into Rhodey’s shoulder and settling in for a nap. 

When they arrive, Tony makes a beeline for the “fun-vee” looking for any opportunity to get away from Rhodey and put off talking about his fight with T’challa. He puts on a show, acting like his usual showboat persona and taking selfies with the soldiers. 

Later, when the shooting begins and Tony is forced to stare at his own name on the bomb besides him, he wishes he'd sat with Rhodey, that the whole fight with T’challa had never happened. 

He wakes up screaming and watching a man he doesn't recognize carve a hole in his chest. He does not know why, why doesn't care. He simply screams and falls back into unconsciousness. 

When he returns to an aware state, Tony is intimately aware of the wires running to and from his chest and the knowledge that he may not make it through this. He does not think of Rhodey and Pepper and T’challa or anyone else he may lose. He cannot afford to think of them. 

“Do you have any family?” Yinsen asks and Tony hesitates. 

Flashes of dark skin contrasting with a bright white smile, and soft hands cradling his face. The soft laughter of the Dora Milaje as T’challa pulls him in and decides to dance with him. 

Tony pushes the thoughts from his mind, “No, I don't.”

He cannot afford to be distracted by thoughts of home, let alone talk of it and inform his captors of better ways to get to him. 

The torture starts, and days blend together. Water seeps in and out of his lungs and awareness creeps away, Tony is lost. He loses track of time, though he knows it's been far too long, even the first few days he spent recovering from his surgery and drifting in and out of sleep were too long. 

Tony agrees to make their weapon, water dribbling out of his mouth and schematics bouncing into his mind. 

He builds, first a miniature arc reactor to protect himself from the chance of his car battery detaching, then he sets to work on escaping. 

“What will you do, when you're free?” Yinsen asks, his hands are steady as he maneuvers molten palladium. 

“Go home,” Tony says, voice hoarse. He dreams of his house in Malibu, sand between his toes. He sees the thick forests of Wakanda, hears birds chirp and wonders if that home will still be there for him when he's free. “I’ll go home.”

When the time for escape comes and Yinsen leaves him in the still charging suit, Tony screams until his throat is raw. He can't help but watch as his new friend charges out with nothing but a gun. 

He finds Yinsen’s body, snarls as the rage builds up throughout his own. He feels alone, more so than he has since he arrived here. No it's not just T’challa and his friends he's missing, it's the man who’s kept him sane this whole time. 

When Tony is out, when his first thought should be escape, he fires on all the Stark Industries weapons and watches in satisfaction as everything burns. Then he takes off, the only thought in his mind is that he won't disappoint Yinsen. He’ll take care of his weapons, won't allow them to rip apart any more families, and somewhere along the way he'll fix his own marriage. 

He walks for hours on end before he sees the helicopter and waves it over. When it touches down and Rhodey grasps him in his arms laughing about a fun-vee, Tony hides tears in his shoulder glad that he still has at least one person left. 

They stop at an Air Force base where he's offered a doctor. Tony thinks of the arc reactor, the pressure that forces him to change even the most basic aspects of life such as breathing, and shakes his head. 

“No doctor,” he rasps to Rhodey. “Husband?”

“He should be on his way,” Rhodey reassures him, “Would you like me to check?”

“No,” Tony says genuine fear in his eyes as he realizes that would mean Rhodey leaving the room. “Stay, he'll get here.”

A day later and T’challa has not surfaced, Tony goes home to Malibu trying not to think of where he'd rather be. 

“Call a press conference.” Tony orders alongside several cheeseburgers, Pepper does. 

When the time comes, Tony knows what he wants to say, though maybe not how to say it. Words come easily to him however, as he thinks of Yinsen, thinks of the families that have suffered at the hands of Stark Industries. 

“In closing, I’m shutting down Stark Industries weapons manufacturing, effective immediately.” 

Ten minutes after the press conference, his cell phone rings: T’challa. His finger hovers over the accept call button, his mind drifting back to the fight before his fateful trip to Afghanistan, the months with out T’challa, and finally T’challa not showing up as Tony waited in a tiny hospital room in an Air Force Base. 

He declines the call. 

In Wakanda, there is a man sitting in a room and staring at his phone as he relives the many times over the past three months he has called this number only for it to never be picked up. 

He stares at the TV, watching as the network replays the scene where man he calls his husband shuts down the weapon construction. It reminds him that Tony is alive.

He picks up his phone again, “Ready a jet.”


End file.
